and many of the big name players from the NRL were reserve/fringe players here.

Luke Burgess wasnt a name player here. Its interesting that clubs brought over Mathers and Tansey to see if they could be the next george burgess considering he wasnt even old enough to be an academy player at Bradford never mind at Souths when they went.

Some players like Dobson and Richards did come over and excel in SL whilst not doing so in the NRL. Some like Ben Cross, Tame Tupou, Willie Mason, Nathan Blacklock, excelled in the NRL and stunk in SL.

Sam Moa wasnt a name player over here, went back and played for the champs, Clinton Toopi was widely thought of as a flop over here, still got another NRL contract after he left leeds.

Joel Clinton had a long NRL career and was awful at HKR, Lance Hohaia has had an awful time at Saints, spent years in the NRL, Laffranchi played for Aus, he is not tearing it up at Saints.

Doesn't matter whether they're in the top 25 or not. If they play a game for the club their remuneration is counted in the salary cap.

O'Loughlin has been passed fit to play. Hooray for the game!

Wigan are not GB RL, they are wigan RLFC, and i am Saints, therefore i hate them and i always will.

Get on with plenty of their fans, and i hope they have a great time over there, with the exception of the hour and a half or so the match is on.

I think Lockers id still 50/50 sounds like he's still not quite sure he's fully fit. And we're not playing with new NRL rules, just 2 refs...

Sydney by 20 if Wigan play well.

It's a friendly...who cares.

Anyone know the Sky Match commentary team for this game?

Please say it is not Eddie and Stevo.

Pat Richards scored 20 tries in the 2005 NRL season.

Arrogant Australians, they just won't give credit to anything English. I wouldn't care if it was Saints playing tomorrow, I'd want them to win, and that's hard to say

With just one hour to kickoff it must be absolutely terrifying for the younger Wigan players. They now know what it must be like to be a prisoner on death row, waiting for the execution to take place in one hour.

Personally, I hope that it is not a walkover, because it will be uninteresting. I would like to see some good tries by both sides, especially by Charnley (who is looking for an NRL contract). It would be great if someone from Wigan made a bust on their 20 yard line, and had Charnley in support when he came to Minichiello, and then to see Charnley take the pass and race 60 metres to score under the posts.

BTW Wigan's Phil Clark is in Australia. I suspect that Sky is taking the Channel 9 commentary during the play, and cutting to Eddie and Stevo in London, with Phil Clark commentating from Sydney, for half time and full time commentary.

Childish comments like this still being posted around. 10 years I agree, the Aussies didn't take it seriously. Now they do. Just look at their squad.

The coverage is so much better than the coverage for the Super League games.

Big crowd as well considering its a friendly...

As it's on the Nine Network, then it will probably be their own commentators. Saying that though, Bill Arthur wasn't on Super League last night, so it could be him and Clarkey on commentary.

If not, it will more than likely be Rabbs, Sterling and Gould.